ForAmerica says Houston National Cemetery is preventing Christian prayers from being said at military funerals

ForAmerica posted an image July 11, 2013, to its Facebook page with a claim about the Houston National Cemetery.

An image posted on Facebook by the conservative group ForAmerica says, "The Houston National Cemetery is preventing Christian prayers from being said at military funerals!"

ForAmerica, which according to its website is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Reston, Va., urges Facebookers to "like" the image "if you agree this is wrong!"

Well, turns out it is wrong -- just not in the way ForAmerica meant.

"That’s an old story," Houston National Cemetery director Mat Williams told us by phone. "We got a bunch of calls about that. But it’s not true."

ForAmerica spokesman Keith Appell told us the image and an accompanying blog entry, posted July 11, 2013, were based on a item posted the day before on the conservative Breitbart.com website and a July 9 report from the Family Research Council, a conservative, Christian group based in Washington, D.C.

The Breitbart item and the council’s report said that on July 26, 2011, U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, "determined that Houston National Cemetery was preventing Christian prayers from being said at military funerals."

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes granted a temporary restraining order May 26, 2011, that allowed a pastor to deliver his Memorial Day invocation as written after the clergyman said then-director Arleen Ocasio told him not to say "Jesus Christ" in the service held at the cemetery, where nearly 70,000 service members and veterans and their spouses have been interred since its dedication in 1965.

Ocasio, according to a Aug. 30, 2011, New York Timesnews story, "began enforcing a little-noticed 2007 policy that prohibits volunteer honor guards from reading recitations — including religious ones — in their funeral rituals, unless families specifically request them." U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs officials said the policy originated after "complaints about religious words or icons being inserted unrequested into veterans’ funerals," the Times story said.

Later that year, the Chronicle reported, Veterans’ Affairs settled a lawsuit that alleged officials had told local veterans and volunteers not to use religious words such as "Jesus" and "God" during funerals at the cemetery.

In the settlement reached Sept. 21, 2011, the VA did not admit fault but agreed not to interfere with religious speech at funerals unless relatives objected, according to the next day’s Chronicle news story.

Since then, current cemetery director Williams said, "We haven’t had any incidents; no problems." U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and a Culberson aide have visited the cemetery, he said, and veterans are there every day: "If there was anything like that, they would be in an uproar. But no, it’s a phony story."

Veterans’ families aren’t restricted from practicing any religion, he said. "It’s their service; they can do any religious ceremony they want."

Leaders of Houston volunteer groups that were plaintiffs in the 2011 lawsuit gave us similar accounts.

"Everything is running very smooth there. There are no problems," said Cheryl Whitfield, director of National Memorial Ladies, whose 34 members sometimes are, she said, the only mourners during funerals at thecemetery. "We attend all of the burials at Houston National Cemetery every day. There are anywhere from four to 12 a day. So we attend approximately 60 a week. And we give our condolences to the family," Whitfield told us by phone. "We use God’s name, we use Jesus’ name; we’re able to say anything to help console the family."

Her group finds out in advance about relatives’ wishes regarding religion’s role in the funeral, she said. "We pretty well know ahead of time if they have an issue with us saying ‘God bless you’ or anything."

The current commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars district that brought the lawsuit, Bill Shaffer, told us by phone that he’s been with District 4 for about 16 years and knew of no such problems before or since the 2011 events. "I know we’ve had Jewish people, I know we’ve had Muslims, we’ve had Christian Science, Baptist, Catholic," he said. "We adhere to whoever it is. That veteran deserves his last rites and we go along with whatever the family wishes, and I just hope that the government continues to do that."

The VFW has been a Christian organization since its founding in 1899, he said, and the team from District 4 that provides funeral honors performs a ritual that can include a 21-gun salute, presentation of the American flag, a chaplain and prayers. "It’s up to them. Whatever part of the ritual they want, we do," he said. "If they want the entire ritual, we do the entire ritual."

ForAmerica spokesman Appell, when informed that we’d found no evidence Christian prayers were being prevented, told us the group "believed the information to be current."

Our ruling

ForAmerica said the Houston National Cemetery "is preventing" Christian prayer at military funerals.

The group based its claim on recent online references to a congressman’s claim in July 2011. We found no current restrictions or even proof that anyone was stopped from saying a Christian prayer in the past. To the contrary, volunteers and the current cemetery director told us Christian prayers are welcome.

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